Violence brief interventions: a rapid review

Provision of a Violence Brief Intervention (VBI) to young men undergoing treatment for a violent injury may represent a teachable moment for the prevention of future interpersonal violence in Scotland. Prior to intervention design, a rapid review of the research literature was necessary to examine existing programmes. After title and abstract screening, eight distinct VBIs were identified from full texts. Whilst none of the programmes were a perfect match for our intervention goals, they did demonstrate the potential effectiveness of brief interventions for violence prevention at both cognitive and behavioural levels. Key themes of successful interventions included brief motivational interviewing as an effective method of engaging with at-risk participants and encouraging change, the utility of social norms approaches for correcting peer norm misperceptions, the usefulness of working with victims of violence in medical settings (particularly oral and maxillofacial surgeries), the importance of addressing the role of alcohol after violent injury, the advantages of a computer-therapist hybrid model of delivery, and the need for adequate follow-up evaluation as part of a randomised control trial. This information has been used to design a VBI which is currently under evaluation

The future of clinical leadership: evidence for physician leadership and the educational pathway for new leaders

Until recently, the title ‘physician leader’ was rarely heard particularly in the UK. But that is changing. Doctors are being drawn into leadership and management more systematically. New educational opportunities are being tailored to the specific needs of doctors. The change towards physician leadership is being driven by research showing that leaders who are experts in the core business, such as doctors, are associated with improved organisational performance. This article summarises that evidence and then reviews what we have learnt about how best to train future physician leaders

Do Women Ask?

Women typically earn less than men. The reasons are not fully understood. Previous studies argue that this may be because (i) women ‘don’t ask’ and (ii) the reason they fail to ask is out of concern for the quality of their relationships at work. This account is difficult to assess with standard labor-economics data sets. Hence we examine direct survey evidence. Using matched employer-employee data from 2013-14, the paper finds that the women-don’t-ask account is incorrect. Once an hours-of-work variable is included in ‘asking’ equations, hypotheses (i) and (ii) can be rejected. Women do ask. However, women do not get

Do Women Ask?

Females typically earn less than males. The reasons are not fully understood. This paper reexamines the idea that women ‘don’t ask’, which potentially assigns part of the responsibility for the gender pay gap on to female behavior. Such an account cannot readily be tested with standard data sets. This paper is the first to be able to use matched employer-employee data in which workers are questioned about their asking behaviour. It concludes that males and females ask equally often for promotions and raises. The paper’s empirical results suggest, however, that while women do now ask they ‘don’t get’

On designing observers for time-delay systems with nonlinear disturbances

This is the post print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below - Copyright 2002 Taylor & Francis LtdIn this paper, the observer design problem is studied for a class of time-delay nonlinear systems. The system under consideration is subject to delayed state and non-linear disturbances. The time-delay is allowed to be time-varying, and the non-linearities are assumed to satisfy global Lipschitz conditions. The problem addressed is the design of state observers such that, for the admissible time-delay as well as non-linear disturbances, the dynamics of the observation error is globally exponentially stable. An effective algebraic matrix inequality approach is developed to solve the non-linear observer design problem. Specifically, some conditions for the existence of the desired observers are derived, and an explicit expression of desired observers is given in terms of some free parameters. A simulation example is included to illustrate the practical applicability of the proposed theory.The work of Z. Wang was supported in part by the University of Kaiserslautern of Germany and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Trends in lower limb amputation incidence in European Union 15+ Countries 1990-2017

Objective: Lower extremity amputation (LEA) carries significant mortality, morbidity and health economic burden. In the Westernworld,it most commonly results from complications of peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD) or diabetic foot disease. Incidence of PAOD has declined in Europe,the United States and parts of Australasia.We aimed to assess trends in LEA incidence in European Union (EU15+) countries for the years 1990 to 2017. Design: Observational study using data obtained from the 2017 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. Materials: GBD Results Tool: http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-too. Methods: Age-standardised incidence rates (ASIRs) for LEA (stratified into toe amputation,and LEA proximal to toes) were extracted from the GBD Results Tool for EU15+ countries foreach ofthe years 1990-2017.Trends were analysed using Join point regression analysis. Results: Between 1990 and 2017, variable trends in the incidence of LEA were observedin EU15+ countries. For LEAs proximal to toes, increasing trends were observed in 6 of 19 countries anddecreasing trends in 9 of 19 countries, with 4 countries showing varying trendsbetween sexes. For toe amputation, increasing trends were observed in 8 of 19 countries and decreasing trends in 8 of 19 countries for both sexes, with 3 countries showing varying trendsbetween sexes. Australia hadthe highest ASIRs for both sexes in all LEAs at all time 6 points, with steadily increasing trends. The USA observed the greatest reduction all LEAsin both sexes over the time periodanalysed (LEAs proximal to toes: females -22.93%, males -29.76%; toe amputation: females -29.93%, males -32.67%). The greatest overall increase in incidence was observed in Australia. Conclusions: Variable trends in LEA incidence were observed across EU15+ countries. These trends do not reflect previously observed reductions in incidence of PAO Dover the same time period

Determination of DiazaCon in Quail Feed and Quail Serum by Ion Pair Reversed-Phase Chromatography

Liquid chromatographic (LC) methods were developed for quantitating the potential avian contraceptive DiazaCon in quail feed and serum. DiazaCon was extracted from ground quail feed with basic n-butyl chloride. The n-butyl chloride extract was evaporated to dryness. The DiazaCon residues were dissolved in an aqueous methanolic ion pairing solution and quantitated by LC at 206 nm. Avian sera was combined with an equal volume of a pH 4 aqueous solution of ion pairing reagent and filtered to remove interfering proteins. DiazaCon was quantitated by LC. Mean recoveries for 500 and 2000 ppm fortified feed were 89.1 and 91.0%, respectively. The mean recovery for sera fortified at 5 levels ranging from 35 to 2000 ppm was 84.9%. Method limits of detection were approximately 14 and 13 ppm for feed and sera, respectively